If you had asked me six months ago what “management control” meant, I might have mumbled something about “financial targets” or “performance reviews.” Now, having done this module, I realise it’s something far deeper—and more interesting.
At its core, management control is about answering a few deceptively simple questions:
- Where are we trying to go?
- Are we on track?
- What course corrections are needed?
- And—crucially—how do we know?
To understand this, I found myself coming back to one metaphor again and again: the dashboard of a car.
A car’s dashboard shows you your speed, distance, fuel, temperature, error codes, and even a live map. Everyone in the car looks at it differently. The driver checks speed and route. The passenger checks temperature. A mechanic plugs in to read error messages. And that’s exactly how a corporate dashboard works. The CFO, BU head, factory manager, and investor relations team may all look at the same business, but they each need different data to make decisions.
This module—and especially the assignment where we analyzed BMW’s financial dashboard—helped me see that a good dashboard is not just about having data. It’s about the right data, for the right person, at the right time. And it should be designed with purpose. Is it meant for performance management? For reporting? For monitoring? Or to energise and align teams?
Through the course, I learned how to read a dashboard using tools like the OVAR grid (Objective-Variable-Action-Result), understand the type of responsibility center (cost, profit, investment), and distinguish between leading vs. lagging indicators. I saw how dashboards could be a mirror—but also a compass.
And maybe most importantly, I learnt that the real value of management control is not in controlling people, but in creating clarity. In a world flooded with data, that might just be one of the most powerful things a manager can do.
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